How to Make Claude (and other AIs) Write Like You
Use the interview method to generate a file with instructions that teach AI how you write.
In 2023, many people were against AI writing.
In 2026, many writers are using AI.
Some writers I follow have admitted they use AI for writing. Others haven’t mentioned it publicly, but they’ve suspiciously increased the number of posts they publish per week over the past few years.
Heck, Substack’s top newsletter in education is called “Write with AI.“
I’m not against AI.
I’m against using AI for bad writing.
If you use AI to enhance your writing and produce high-quality work more frequently, your readers will be happy.
The problem is that most people use AI to produce bad writing.
The fix isn’t a better prompt. It’s a file.
One file that teaches AI exactly how you write, what you never say, and what makes your writing yours. You create it once. You reuse it every time.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build that file from scratch using an interview method that takes about 30 minutes.
Hey, Diana here! I recently renamed my Substack to Write, Prompt, Scale.
Every post will be about building smarter AI writing systems — not replacing your voice, but amplifying it. If this sounds like a journey worth following, support me by becoming a paid subscriber :)
Why most produce AI slop
Since ChatGPT’s release, we’ve been obsessed with the em-dash and a few words that make your writing sound AI.
Here’s my (ironic) response to this:
My advice: Don’t mind AI words.
It’s fine if you have a few AI words in your vocabulary.
What’s not fine is to produce content under your name that doesn’t sound like you.
By default, AI doesn’t know your voice. It doesn’t know you hate the word “utilize.” It doesn’t know you always open with a personal story, or that you’d never use a semicolon in a million years.
So it defaults to the safest, most average version of whatever you asked for.
That’s not AI’s fault. You gave it a vague instruction in your prompts and expected a specific result.
The file that fixes this
The fix is an .md file (a simple text file with some formatting). The one we’ll create contains everything AI needs to write like you.
Not “write well.” Write like you.
Here’s what goes in it:
Words and phrases you’d never use
Sentence patterns you default to
How you open and close pieces
Your formatting instincts (short paragraphs? headers? lists?)
What your writing sounds like at its best
Writers you admire and what you’d steal from each one
Positions you’d never take
and more!
The insight that makes this work: most of a good voice profile is about what you reject. Not “I like direct writing,” but “I’d never use semicolons because they make my writing sound like a college essay.”
That’s the kind of specificity AI can actually use.
